


The Birds and the Bees Through the Years

by jugglequeen



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Domestic Bliss, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-08
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2019-03-28 14:17:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13905810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jugglequeen/pseuds/jugglequeen
Summary: AU where Scully is allowed to raise both of her children, telling them how babies are made at different stages in their lives.





	1. Newborn

“You’re a miracle, do you understand, little William? You’re our miracle, mine and your daddy’s.”

Scully kisses her baby’s head and inhales his newborn scent, the velvety peach hair tickling her nose.

“I can’t explain how your father and I were able to make you but it doesn’t matter anymore. You’re ours now, and we’ll never let go of you.”

A tear runs downs her cheek, coming to a rest on baby William’s forehead.

“I love you to the moon and back,” she whispers to the rosy bundle, “and I don’t care if we ever get to the botton of your conception.”

She really means it, now that everything she’s been through to reach this point in her life is forgotten in her post-partum, hormone-induced complete and utter bliss.


	2. Breastfeeding

Emily watches intensely how her little baby brother is latched onto her mother's breast, sucking eagerly and emitting a satisfied grunt every now and then. 

"Mommy?"

"Yes, sweetie?"

"How come there's enough milk in them? He's been drinking from them so many weeks now and they are so small," the curious 6-year old asks in her thirst for understanding the world. Scully, on her part, thinks her breasts are huge compared to their normal size. They had already grown during her pregnancy but nursing does a whole different thing to them. Now that William is sleeping through the night occasionally, they almost explode in the morning, and latching him on is a great relief.

"The amount of milk produced has nothing to do with the size of the breast, Em. A mother's body produces as much as the baby needs which means the more a baby drinks, the more milk is produced. It's called a demand-and-supply process. When the baby is done drinking, the breast refills for when the baby is hungry again."

"Is it just boring regular milk or does it come in different flavors? Cocoa maybe?"

Scully can't keep herself from chuckling at the droll question. "No, sweetheart, it doesn't taste like cocoa, but some of what the mother eats or drinks pass into the breast milk. That's why I didn't have any of the peanut butter cookies yesterday at grandma's."

"But you love grandma's peanut butter cookies!"

"I do, but peanuts have allergenic compounds that can be transmitted through breast milk. William might have a peanut allergy we don't know anything of yet, so I rather not expose him to it before I'm certain he tolerates it. There is other food which is said to give a baby colics or nappy rashes because their immature digestive tract isn't used to it, like citrus fruit for example. I can either try it out at the risk of having a fussy or whiny baby or I stay away from it as long as I'm nursing."

"Hmmm." Emily tilts her head to the side, processing the information and assessing it. A moment later, she asks, "is that why you don't have wine at dinner when daddy has some?"

"Exactly. William would share the wine in the breast milk and he's much too young to have alcohol."

"Sure," Emily confirms. "Children mustn't have alcohol, neither do babies." 

"You're absolutely right."

"Nursing is tough," Emily concludes, "mommies have to keep a lot in mind and they have to get up every night to feed the baby."

Scully is overwhelmed by her daughter's compassion. She smiles and cups Emily's cheek with her free hand, stroking it gently with her thumb. "It also is a great joy, sweetheart. To be able to nurture your baby is a wonderful experience for a mother and it strengthens the bond between mother and child." She could tell Emily about the hormones which are involved, oxytocin and prolactin, but she's still too young to understand the biochemistry behind breastfeeding. But the girl understands something else, something that feels like a stab into Scully's heart.

"You never had that with me. I didn’t grow in your belly and you never nursed me. We don't have that bond," she says, her sad face betraying her steady voice. "Being adopted sucks. Why couldn't I have been in your belly too? Like William? Why can't I be your real child just like he is?"

Scully's heart skips a beat. She looks at Emily and can't help cursing for the thousand's time whoever is responsible for the injustice done to her. The girl is right, Scully thinks, it sucks. She should've been the woman to carry her. That ova had belonged to her and she should've conceived Emily in an act of love just like she had conceived William. She should've carried her in her womb for nine months, should've felt her fluttery movements inside her, should've brought her to life, and should've nursed her. Should've, should've, should've. There are so many subjunctives in this train of thought, it makes her sick. But she can't have Emily share her issues, the girl has suffered enough already in her short life. The most important thing is the here and now, and here and now Scully couldn't be any happier with both her children.

William has fallen asleep sucking on her nipple like he often does while feeding. Scully pulls him away from her breast, settles him on her shoulder and gently pats his back to make him burp. She buttons herself up with one hand, then holds it out to invite Emily into an embrace. The girl scoots close and nestles against her mother's side.

"You are my real child, sweetie. Daddy and I love you very much. You're our small bean." She hugs her tight and kisses her hair.

"As much as you love William?"

Scully knows this goes beyond the usual insecurity of a child having to cope with the arrival of a new sibling. They've never kept it a secret from her that she was an adopted child. Emily was only three when she came to live with Mulder and her, the memories of the Sims, her adoptive parents before them, might have been faded at some point, but Scully didn't want that to happen. Overwhelming her with information about secret government programs, stolen ova, and artificial insemination hasn't been contemplated so far because of her still young age, but Emily knows she'd been a daughter to another set of parents before she came to them.

"Of course as much as we love William. You are our child just like he is. We're the Mulder family, all four of us. Don't ever doubt that, Em!"

Scully managed to conjure a smile on the girl's face, exactly what she hoped to achieve. Three years of parenting, of showering her with love and care, have given the girl a sense of basic trust every child should have in their parents. And Mulder and she are her parents in the truest sense of the word, although official authorities had long put a spoke in their wheel. 

"But you are a Scully, mommy."

"Only to daddy. For the rest of the world, I'm a Mulder just like the three of you. In my heart anyway."

It had started out as a marriage on paper for Scully to be able to get custody of Emily. She would've never been allowed to be her legal guardian as a single woman, notwithstanding the fact that the DNA proved she was her biological mother. When all administrative aspects had been taken care of and Mrs. Fox Mulder had been officially declared Emily's mother, Mulder suggested adopting Emily also, just so she would have a complete set of parents to rely on. Their connection had turned into a real marriage eventually, William being a living proof. The life Scully had always dreamt of when she was a little girl, has become a reality. She's married to a man she loves from the bottom of her heart and has two wonderful children.

"I love you, mommy," Emily declares with sparkling eyes, letting Scully's heart swell.

"I love you too, Em. To the moon and back."

"Love you too, little brother," the girl says and kisses the sleeping baby's bald head in a sentiment of sisterly love.

Scully's heart spills over with emotion, and not just because of the hormones released by breastfeeding.


	3. Glass Bowl

"What's up, Will? Did you have a good day at school?"

It's always the same question he gets asked when he returns home. Either by his mom or by his dad, depending on who sees him first. Sometimes his parents are both away on a case and his grandma takes care of him. She doesn't ask him this annoying question he doesn't want to answer. He doesn't want to talk about school as soon as he leaves the building. His grandma understands, his parents always want to know. William thinks that might be the difference between parents and grandparents, the former want to educate and raise you and make you a better person, the latter just want to spoil and love you. His parents love him too, William knows. Still, his only answer to his mother's question is a non-committal, "hmpf."

"What's that supposed to mean? Mind talking to your mother in whole sentences?" She isn't letting him off the hook, and actually today there is something the boy would like to share.

"Jimmy is such a liar, mom!"

Jimmy is his friend since kindergarten, but from time to time they argue about something and today is one of those days. William's still confused about what came up in school today.

"He said his parents made him in a glass bowl and that's why he's so bright and gets A's in maths all the time."

Scully looks up from the kitchen sink where she's been doing the dishes. "Oh? You've gotten your maths results today?"

"Yup."

"And what have you got?"

"B+," the boy huffs, signaling he's not happy about it.

"That's perfectly fine, Will. Congratulation."

Scully hates it when her son is never satisfied with his accolades. Ambition is a good thing, so is stamina and will-power, but he's also just a kid who should enjoy life. Scully remembers her own ride through school all the way until graduating from medical school. She spent too much time with her nose in her books and too little out with her friends. It had earned her the best grades but her social life had fallen a bit by the wayside. It had become a recurring pattern in her life. For a long time, her job had played the most important part she sacrificed family dinners and free weekends for. Even a date once in a while. Her priorities hadn't shifted until she became a mother. First, of a three-year-old girl she adopted and then, three years later, of a baby boy who turned eight last month and is upset about something she hasn't got a clue of yet.

"But Jimmy got an A."

"I don't care what your friends get and neither should you. You've had problems with that particular topic." Text problems, of all kind. The child that was able to read at the age of four had difficulties solving maths text problems. Scully believed it had something to do with compartmentalizing. For William, reading didn't have anything to do with maths. He read the text but just didn't see the maths behind it. It had taken quite a few private lessons until he understood how to approach the task. "But that didn't keep you from making an effort. You studied hard and you are redeemed with a very good grade. You don't have to be perfect, honey, or the best of your class. We love you no matter what grade you're bringing home. And I bet Jimmy's parents tell him just the same."

"But he still is a liar."

"In what sense a liar?"

"Because he brags about being made in a laboratory. He says he's some kind of superhuman because a scientist created him in a glass bowl. But babies are made in the bedroom by their moms and dads when they like each other very much, right?"

Scully clears her throat before she answers. She feels they are approaching difficult territory. "You're right, William, most babies are made when their parents make love to each other in bed, but not all of them. Jimmy might have told you the truth, it's possible he was conceived by artificial insemination."

"Artificial what?"

"Insemination. It means the mother's egg and father's sperm are brought together outside the woman's body."

"In a glass bowl?"

"Well, it's called a petri dish, but yes, it's more or less a glass bowl, rather a small, shallow saucer. The procedure is also called in-vitro fertilization. In vitro is Latin and means within a glass, observable in a test tube or any kind of artificial environment."

"And it's done to make smarter babies?"

"No, it's done when a couple wants to have children but can't the natural way. In the bedroom." She clears her throat again. Talking to her children about the birds and the bees has never been easy for her. Making it sound like a lesson in biology class is her MO most of the time.

"Oh."

"It's a demanding procedure. It puts the future parents under a lot of stress, especially the mothers, but also the fathers. It's not much fun. And it costs quite a bit of money. Only couples that have tried for a baby without success for a long time would try in-vitro."

"Hmmm."

William lets the information sink in. His mother is always good at explaining those things to him. It's so much easier to ask her than to look it up in a book. She seems to be a resource for any kind of topic. "How come you know so much about everything, mom? Even about this in-vitro stuff," he marvels.

"I'm a medical doctor, remember?"

"But you examine corpses to find out why they died, you don't create babies."

He has a point, Scully has to admit. She works on the opposite side of the spectrum. She doesn't deal with the creation of life but with its termination. Some of her classmates at medical school chose to specialize in gynecology exactly for that reason, to be working in a medical field that entailed joy and health and not mainly sorrow and illness. She deals not only with illness but with murder, crime, and death. She's being called when the worst things have happened and nothing she can do will help the victims, their families, and friends. All she can do is help find the offenders and bring them to justice.

Scully struggles a bit with what she should reply, then decides her son is old enough to understand. "I have first-hand experience, Will."

"What? I'm also a test tube baby?"

"No," she hurries to erase that thought from his mind, "no, you're not."

"Emily?"

"Daddy and I adopted Emily, remember? You know she came to live with us when she was three years old." It's only half the truth, but Emily hasn't been told the story of her genesis yet, and she can't learn from her little brother. Mulder and Scully have been procrastinating the conversation with their daughter so far, waiting for the right moment. The moment just never seems right.

"Ah, right. So where does your first-hand experience come from then, mom?"

Eagerness for knowledge. It characterizes every child, but William in particular. He drinks in information like a sponge. Scully sighs barely audible. Now that she has started, she has to finish.

"I was once told that I couldn't have children. Doctors call it barren or infertile. I suffered from a condition that prevented for me to conceive a baby naturally."

"In the bedroom. With daddy."

"Um...yes."

"What condition?"

Tenacity, thy name is William. Scully puts her thoughts into an order for a moment, tries to think of the right words to explain it to an eight-year-old.

"A woman's body usually contains enough eggs to provide one every month to get inseminated by a man's sperm. If this happens, the egg starts dividing and settles down in the uterus. The woman is pregnant. The baby grows and nine months later it's born. My condition was called Premature Ovarian Failure which means that there were no eggs in my ovaries, and without an egg, there couldn't be a baby."

Thank God for science. As long as Scully can quote from one of her textbooks, even if it's one explaining the wonder of propagation to children, she's on a secure footing. She once read in a guidebook for parents that it's important to respect the child's natural curiosity without being judgmental, that if she avoids these talks, her children won't learn her values about sex, but will develop their own from what they hear from friends and the media. And she doesn't want that to happen. From a psychology professor, she heard that the most important thing is for a parent to explain the difficult topic without seeming anxious, that the child picks up the melody line, not the exact words. Both children have come to her in mysterious, inexplicable ways but she doesn't want either of them to believe they were an anomaly or some kind of freak.

"But mom, where is the baby daddy and you made in this...uh, what is the bowl called again?"

Answer the questions as they come, that's what the guidebook also said. Don't overload a child with information but don't try to steer the conversation elsewhere either. Scully wants to be an 'ask-able' parent, doesn't want her children to think the topic is a taboo in their family.

"Petri dish. There is no guarantee the procedure works, actually it fails more often than it is successful. We tried twice but it didn't take it. We don't have any other children besides Emily and you."

"Okay, but how come I exist then? If dad and you couldn't make babies in the bedroom neither in a petri dish?"

Once again, William's quick thinking mind, his wit and ability to always see the bigger picture surprises Scully, in a pleasant way.

"You, my son, are a miracle," she whispers in an uneven voice, stroking his hair lovingly.

To this day, Scully is still clueless how it had been possible for her to become pregnant. The only logical explanation would be that they hadn't been thorough enough when they took the ova from her. Somewhere in her ovarian tubes there had to be an egg hiding from the insidious harvesters, waiting for the right moment to make its voyage one fine day to join up with a sperm, Mulder's sperm. When she calculates back from the day William was born, she must have conceived him during one of their first times in bed. What a lucky stroke of fate. It seems that at least once in their lives the stars had aligned and fate had been on their side.

A pair of cerulean blue eyes just like her own stare at her, spanned by the cutest wrinkled forehead Scully has ever seen, for the boy tries hard to throw his mother an appraising look. The only thing missing is that he quirks his left eyebrow, and when he does, Scully almost laughs at the smaller version of herself. Are gestures and facial expressions hereditary or has she looked at him like this so often that he imitates her subconsciously?

Don't overload your child with information, rings in the back of Scully's head, another advice from one of the brochures she'd been reading about parenting when she became a mother. Going into detail about how science failed to provide an explanation for a natural conception would overwhelm the boy for sure.

"You are a miracle because you came to us at a moment of our lives we'd almost lost hope that something really good would ever happen to us. We had already accepted that Em would never get a little brother or sister, and suddenly, totally unexpected, you announced yourself. It was so out of the question that I could be expecting a baby that your father and I misinterpreted the first signs as symptoms of a serious illness. I didn't believe the doctor when he congratulated me on being pregnant. I truly thought he was making a joke."

"That would have been very mean of the doctor. I bet you were sad that you couldn't have children and playing a prank would've have been really nasty."

William is not only smart but also remarkably sensitive for a boy his age. In such moments, Scully sees the young Mulder in him, Mulder at a time he was still called Fox. An attentive, empathic, and caring boy and protective older brother to his sister Samantha.

"Yes, definitely. But he wasn't mean, he was being very nice actually."

"So, I'm not a test tube baby. I'm a completely normal child."

"Yes, you are."

"Normal is okay."

"More than okay."

"Even if I don't get A's?"

"Your school grades have nothing to do with what you're worth as a person, Will. I want you to remember that well. What really defines a person is their compassion, their ability to truly love another human being, to give instead of taking. When you think about yourself, I want you to pay attention to how you interact with others, with your friends, with your family, and most certainly not to a grade you got in maths."

"Hmmm," the boy lets his mother's words sink it. They seem heavy and significant, but there's something else bothering him.

"So, you chose Em as your child but you had to take what you got in me."

"I'm not sure I understand what you mean, Will." Her son's trains of thought take unpredictable turns sometimes.

"You saw her and liked her and then you decided to adopt her, but when I was born you had no choice, you had to keep me. Would you have adopted me too? I mean, if you had been given a chance to decide? If you had found me somewhere, in an orphanage or some other place, would you have chosen me or would you have looked for another kid? Someone you liked better?"

It takes Scully a moment to fully grasp the idea behind William's question. Usually, the adopted child in a family questions if they're being loved as much as the biological child. They are usually the ones who are unsure about their position in the family, not the biological one. Her son surprises her once again with the way he looks at things, with how he sees the world around him. She feels the urge to pull him close and shower him with kisses but she doubts he would appreciate this kind of answer. He needs a reasonable explanation he can verify.

"There is no difference between Emily and you as our children, William. I can speak for your father as much as I'm speaking for myself. We were blessed with two little individuals enriching our lives and it doesn't matter how we became a family, the only thing that matters is that we did. We're linked together by our love for each other, not by how we joined this family."

"Is that why grandma calls dad her son once in a while? Because he isn't her son, right? Uncle Bill and uncle Charlie are."

"Daddy is grandma's son-in-law. That is what he's called officially because he's married to me, her daughter. But she loves him just like she loves uncle Bill and uncle Charlie. Even before we were married, she loved him and treated him like family. See, love has nothing to do with how the other person came into your life. You either do love someone, or you don't."

"Complicated."

"Well, actually, it's quite simple. You'll understand better once you're older, sweetie."

"Ugh, mom, don't call me that! I'm not a baby anymore!"

"No, you're not," Scully admits, hiding her melancholy at how fast he has grown. "I'm sorry. William."

"Will is okay, but not sweetie or jellybean or pumkin or-"

"I got it, sugarplum." She grins and hurries to add, "just teasing."

"Good." The boy is really serious about this. "I'm going to also tell dad. I hate it when he calls me fuzzybear. Only because his parents chose to call him Fox doesn't give him the right to annoy his own children likewise. I wonder why Em still lets him call her kitten. I mean, seriously, she's all grown up."

She's fourteen, Scully thinks, and still their baby. They will always remain their babies, their sweetpeas, their angels, and it strikes her as funny that when it comes to naming their children, Mulder is even more prone than she to this syrupy tawdriness. The man who demands to be called by his last name picks of an embarrassment of riches coming up with pet names for his offspring. Maybe it's because he missed this kind of fluffiness as a kid, the sugary sweetness with which parents coat their children.

"What's for dinner?" William asks all of a sudden, letting go of the topic of his conception abruptly which, the guidebooks say, is typical for children his age.

"Chicken curry with rice," Scully answers somewhat relieved the conversation is over. It won't be the last time she will be bombarded with questions, either from him or Emily. She will be open and willing to answer each and every one of them.

"Oh, yum! I'm in my room, call me when it's done." He's already halfway up the stairs.

"I'll call you when the table needs to be set."

"Just as well," the boy shouts down from the landing, ten seconds later Scully hears his door slide shut.

She turns to the stove where the chicken curry has been simmering for almost an hour now, lifts the lid off the pot and stirs absentmindedly. She marvels at how mundane her life is at times. Preparing food, waiting for her husband to come and her family to gather at the dinner table. She worries more often about school, the grocery list and how fast her kids grow out of their shoes nowadays than liver-eating psychopaths, men regrowing body parts and immortal photographers, and it's not necessarily a bad thing. Not at all.

Who would have thought life had this in store for her when young, green, ambitious Special Agent Dana Scully took her first ride down to the basement to meet her new partner?

She loves it, and she knows Mulder loves it as much.


	4. AB Negative

"Mom, what blood type do you have?" 

Emily has barely closed the door behind her when her schoolbag is already airborne and flies through the hallway, coming to a rest with a loud thud below the coat rack.

"Emily, what did I tell you about throwing your schoolbag around? Do you want to break your water bottle?"

"I drank it all, mom, and you can't deny I hit the target pretty well."

Scully sighs. Teenagers. They seem to overflow with energy and are never ready to listen to parental reasoning without having the last word.

"So?"

"So what?"

"What blood type do you have?" the girl asks again, impatience now evident in her voice.

"AB negative. Why do you ask?"

Emily's answer is an excited shriek. "Really? Wow, so do I!"

"How do you know?" 

Scully knows her daughter's blood type, of course. She knows the blood types of every family member. She knows about every condition, every slightly raised parameter, every increased health risk one of them might possibly have. She performs their medical check-ups herself, unwilling to entrust her loved ones to someone else. 

"We determined our blood types in biology class today and learned what it means for people to have a certain blood type. Like when it comes to blood donations or to what blood type your children will have. It was super interesting, and I found out I had AB negative. And you have it too! That is so awesome! I mean, it's the most seldom blood type in the whole world and we both have it!"

"What's so awesome about AB negative? If you listened to your teacher, and I'm sure it was mentioned in class, you would be aware that rhesus factor negative means you can only receive blood from a donor whose type is also negative, which means there aren't so many out there."

"But we can donate blood to each other, mom! Don't you see what a lucky coincidence that is? That we have the same type, I mean. If you were my birth mother, the chances would be quite high that you'd passed your blood type on to me, about 30 percent, but we aren't blood relatives, so this is like a lottery jackpot. I will always donate my blood to you, mommy," the teenage girl chirps sugar sweetly, placing a quick peck on Scully's cheek.

"I never want to see the day you're so severely injured you need a blood donation from me."

"But you could. Donate."

"Yes, and I most certainly would. I'd give my very last drop of blood to you if I had to, sweetheart."

"I can't believe what a coincidence that is!"

A thought captures Scully's mind with such a vengeance that she speaks it out loud enough for Emily to hear, although she most certainly doesn’t intend to. 

"It might be less coincidental than you think."

When Scully hears herself pronounce the words, she stills instantly. Shit, shit, shit, she thinks. That wasn't supposed to happen. A kernel of hope resides in her that Emily hasn't listened close enough, but she has, and of course, the teenager's interest has been piqued by the unconsciously mumbled words. 

"Less coincidental than I think? In what sense?" 

Scully heaves a heavy sigh. She's always known the day would eventually come she has to tell Emily about her procreation. Mulder and she have procrastinated the inevitable conversation waiting for the right moment, but the right moment has never presented itself. Until today. Today it's apparently coming forward.

"Actually, I didn't want to do this without Mulder," Scully tries to maneuver herself out of the tight spot one more time.

"Do what?"

"Tell you something about yourself you don't know yet."

"Which is what?"

"Like I said, your father and I planned to tell you together."

"But dad is in Europe for another two weeks for his book promotion, mom,” Emily whines, “you don't want to wait until he's back now, do you?" 

"I would if I'm being honest."

"No way! You can't suggest our blood types are the same by something other than coincidence and leave it at that. Because if it's not coincidental, it means it's hereditary, and this would consequently mean we were blood relatives. But you adopted me, we can't be blood relatives."

Scully is unable to form a reasonable response. She just holds her daughter's intense stare, the urge to protect her from all of the world's harm spreading through her entire body. She adopted her all those years ago to snatch her from a circle of men who had used her, to bring her to safety, to love her and to protect her, to give her a carefree life every three-year-old girl deserves. But as much as she wants to wrap her in cotton, to shield her from the unsettling events of her early life, she also knows adoptive children need to know about their roots. Every guide book tells you so. They are curious about their adoption story and their birth family. 

Mulder and Scully have always been aware of that, and so it's never been a secret in their family that Emily is their adopted child. They have always spoken openly about how they started their family the very day they were given custody of her, how grateful they were that her birth parents had brought her into this world and made it possible for her to join them. The exact circumstances, the horrible truth behind the first three years of her life, have not yet been disclosed to her though. It has never seemed age-appropriate. 

Scully is not sure that now that Emily has just turned fifteen, she's old enough to cope with it. She would prefer to discuss with Mulder if he thought their daughter was ready for her full adoption story, but he's out of the country and not available right now. She realizes she has to decide this on her own when the teenager asks her again, not hiding her determination to get an answer here and now. The girl seeks for confirmation that the world as she's seen it until this day is still the same, and Scully feels awful for having to tear down her daughter's house of cards.

"We are blood relatives, Emily," she says, painfully aware that this doesn't explain anything but is only going to raise more, bigger questions.

"We are blood relatives," Emily parrots, her face full of incredulity and disbelief.

"Yes."

"What do you mean we are blood relatives?"

"What I mean is..." Scully inhales deeply and closes her eyes when she speaks the meaningful words. "It means that I am your biological mother, Emily."

Again, the teenager needs to repeat what she's just heard for the information to sink in. She stretches the words apart, making a pause between every single one to give herself the time to process their meaning. 

"You. Are. My. Biological. Mother." 

"Yes," is all Scully is able to reply. How she wished Mulder was there to fill in the gaps. 

If she knew the train of thought her one-word statement would put in motion in Emily's head, a train gathering speed by the second, she would fill the uncomfortable silence between them with an explanation. But she's clueless about the story her daughter is making up in her head, and so it hits her full force as if she was a fallen tree on the tracks.

"I see. You are my biological mom. You gave birth to me, you didn't want me, you gave me up, the Sims adopted me, and when they died you changed your mind and took me back. Like a neat accessory of some kind you learned to value only years later." 

Emily narrates in such quick succession what she thinks had to be the course of events, Scully has no chance to intervene. The girl's voice is cold and full of reproach, so are her eyes when she looks at her mother. 

"I take it that's what happened back then."

Scully really should have seen this coming. Teenagers Emily's age are struggling with their place in life, they are chronically self-conscious and prone to a low sense of self-worth. Her believing that she wasn't more than a fashion accessory to her, hurts Scully though. She's showered the girl with nothing but love and caring over the past 12 years. 

"No. It's not what happened. I'm not your birth mother, I am your biological mother. That's not necessarily the same person," Scully explains but scientific nitpicks don't have the power to soothe the confused teenager.

"Not the same person? How can they be not the same person?" Emily huffs, fidgeting wildly with her hands.

Another sigh is again all Scully can manage. She's overwhelmed by her daughter's aggressive tone and her own incapacity to explain it all in an understandable manner. How come she's never thought about how to do this properly? Why have Mulder and she never talked about how to break the story to Emily? It must have something to do with how much they've dreaded this conversation. 

Emily is on edge. Her voice is out of control when she yells at her mother. 

"Mom! Would it be too much for me to ask for a bit more of an explanation?"

Scully's chin drops to her chest. She has to get her brain to work quickly or the situation will get out of hand. Much as she wanted to do this together with Mulder, there's no way their daughter will let her off the hook now. He will be away for another two weeks, she can't possibly fob Emily off with only parts of the story and wait with the rest until he's back. The girl needs the whole story now. All of it. 

"Please let's sit down, Emily. This will take some time. It's a long story."

"I prefer to stand if you don't mind," the teenager answers, pointedly crossing her arms in front of her chest and lifting her chin. 

"Please," Scully appeals to her, motioning to her to have a seat on the sofa, her eyes beseeching her daughter. "How am I to have a sincere, personal conversation with you if you are standing over there throwing daggers at me? Sit next to me, please."

Wordlessly, Emily sits down with her mother - adoptive, birth, biological or whatever kind - but her arms remain in front of her chest like a shield. She eyes Scully expectantly, albeit less dismissively.

Scully gathers her thoughts and decides to begin at the very beginning. 

"You've heard of in-vitro fertilization, haven't you?"

"Sure."

"You were created with the help of IVF, Emily, and the egg which was used for the procedure was mine."

"What the-?"

Scully raises her hand to stop her. "Hear me out, please. There is more." She wipes her sweaty palms dry on her thighs before she continues. "My egg was used for the procedure, but not to implant it into my uterus. I didn't carry you, a woman we don't know the identity of did, someone called a surrogate mother."

"Oh great! One more to throw into the mix! Now you're telling I have a biological mother, a birth mother, an adoptive mother, two adoptive mothers actually, and a surrogate mother? That is just...so...crazy! Is there also a foster mother somewhere? A single mother? Stay-at-home mother? Working mother? Uncaring mother? Huh? How many different mothers are there in my life?"

She understands her daughter's anger, she really does, but that doesn't keep her from feeling offended by her accusations. None of this is her fault, Scully thinks. She's was mistreated by these men, abused, harmed, dehumanized, violated, just like Emily. The only mistake she might have made is not having told her earlier. But would it have been any easier one year prior? Two years?

Scully decides to ignore Emily's sarcasm, chalking it up to the exceptional situation the girl finds herself thrown into. She is reacting irrationally, she's overshooting because she's completely lost. That's okay. Scully knows that all she can do now is to explain everything to her in a rational and unagitated manner, so she continues, keeping her voice steady and calm.

"A surrogate isn't genetically related to the baby she's carrying and giving birth to. This woman was only ever meant to be a surrogate. She gave you up once you were born and the Sims adopted you. They became your legal parents. I didn't know I had a daughter until our paths crossed when you were three years old."

"I was created in a lab to be carried by some woman and later on adopted by another woman? And you had donated the eggs for it? Like in 'I was young and needed the money'?"

Emily's sharp voice cuts through Scully's heart. She realizes that as long as she gives her only bits and pieces, the girl is not going to see the whole picture and she will continue venting her anger on her, but the injustice done to herself, to the Sims, and most of all to the little girl who is now sitting in front of her a grown, young woman, is still nagging at Scully. Talking about it is like living through it all over again.

"Donate isn't the right word. They were taken." 

Scully sighs at the pair of mute eyes staring at her. 

"This isn't easy for me, Emily, I'm trying my best here, okay? Just listen to me without jumping to any conclusions. Can you do that?"

"Mmm," Emily hums and nods, probably beginning to understand she's not the only victim in this story.

Scully intertwines her hands and kneads her fingers. She's so tensed-up she feels every muscle in her body stiffen. She licks her lips before she speaks. 

"You know Mulder and I worked on the so-called X-Files at the FBI, unsolved cases of an inexplicable nature. They not only led us to supernatural phenomena but also to man-made conspiracies. The men behind them were powerful and reckless, they carried out their plans and didn’t let possible human casualties deter them. They used people, mainly women, to their selfish ends." 

It feels like the walls are closing in, the room becoming smaller and smaller, the air vanishing. Scully gasps for breath like a fish ashore. "I was one of those women," she finally manages to croak. The last remark also holds true for Emily. The girl was treated like a lab rat just like Scully, but she would keep that from her as long as possible.

"During the first year of working on the X-Files, I was abducted and went missing for three months. I didn't have a clear recollection of what had been done to me when I was returned, I was just glad to be alive. We found out later that they had experimented on me and that harvesting my ova had been part of the program."

A shocked gasp escapes Emily's throat before she covers mouth with her hands in a gesture of fright. She shakes her head in obvious lack of a full grasp of the meaning of what her mother has just told her. 

"Harvesting your ova?"

"They took the eggs out of my uterine tubes. Without my knowledge and most certainly without my consent. Later on, one of these eggs was used for an IVF procedure to create-"

"What?" Emily interjects indignantly, "they took your eggs out of your uterine tubes without your consent? That's rape, mom! They raped you!"

"Well-"

"I can't believe it! Your right of physical integrity had been severely violated! Who believes they can treat women this way? Only men! They abducted you and raped you! I-I...I just can't believe it!" Emily rants, totally absorbed by what happened to her mother.

"That's not the point, Em," Scully tries to draw her attention back to the initial subject matter: the girl's procreation.

"Not the point? Of course, it is the point! Patriarchal power used to mistreat women absolutely is the point, mom! We have to fight against the exploitation of female-"

"Will you please stop it, Emily!" Scully's loud voice cuts harshly through the juvenile tirade about gender inequality. "Much as you're right, I'm not interested in having this discussion right now, I want to explain my biological connection with you."

"I have a biological connection to my adoptive mother?"

"If you hadn't interrupted me but listened, you would understand already. You were created in-vitro with one of my eggs. Unbeknownst to me. A surrogate carried you in her womb and eventually bore you. You were then adopted by your first parents, the Sims, who were also unwilling participants of the same program. I didn’t know I had a daughter living until we met when you were already three years old and had just lost your mother."

"How did you know I was your daughter?"

"I didn’t. When I saw you, I noticed a resemblance to my late sister. You looked just like her when she was a girl. She was some kind of rebel, you have to know, did everything to upset my parents. She was estranged with them around the time you must have been born. I assumed she'd become pregnant with you unintentionally and that she'd given you up for adoption. I made the FBI lab run her DNA against yours and it showed a match, but one that qualified you as relatives, not as mother and daughter. They came up with a first-degree match anyway though, a match with a DNA sample stored in the FBI database."

"Yours," Emily concludes.

"Yes, mine," Scully groans. "I didn't understand a thing, of course. It was simply completely impossible that you were my biological child. I had been diagnosed as barren and assumed my infertility was a side-effect of my cancer treatment. I had never entertained the idea that my ova had been taken and was out there somewhere, being used by a group of unscrupulous so-called scientists to create babies in a highly unethical experiment. It was Mulder who cleared things up. He knew what had been done to me but had chosen not to tell me in an effort to protect me. I had been recovering from cancer and he wanted to spare me more bad news."

"Dad knew? Is he-"

"No. He's not your biological father."

"Did you run his DNA against mine too?"

"I didn't have to. I knew his blood type was 0."

Emily just needs a short moment to put two and two together. "I see. A mother with blood type AB and a father with blood type 0 would have a child with either A or B."

Scully smiles. "I expect nothing but a very good grade in the biology exam on blood types, young lady."

Emily smiles back for only a second, then her face turns earnest again. "So you found out I was your biological child. What did you do?"

"Your parents had both passed and you were very sick. I thought my status as a federal agent, my profession as a medical doctor, and the DNA proof of our genetic relatedness would entitle me to get custody of you, but they wouldn't give it to a single woman. So Mulder, who was my FBI partner and also best friend, offered to get married."

"You two married just so you could get custody of me? Not because you loved each other?"

"Well, I guess he liked me a little bit to make the offer," Scully says, remembering how flummoxed she indeed was when Mulder proposed, and how flattered.

"Why would he do that if he wasn't in a romantic relationship with you?"

"As I said, he was my best friend and he knew how much I wanted to be your mother. He wanted to do me a favor, but he didn't do it only for me. He also hated the idea that some distant aunt who'd never cared about you would be your legal guardian."

"I take it he also liked me a little bit," Emily offers with a shy smile.

"Oh, he totally adored you from the first moment he saw you, sweetie."

"So, let's see if I'm getting all of this right. You are my biological mother and became my adoptive mother later on, but you're not my birth mother. Dad is my adoptive father with no genetic relation to me whatsoever. William is my half-brother because we have the same biological mother. He is dad's and your biological child, one you conceived naturally, carried and gave birth to."

"Uhm, well...yeah, that more or less covers it."

The teenager chuckles. It's not a bitter or sour chuckle, rather an amused one. "This family is one of a kind, really."

"It is. The best I can imagine," Scully whispers, tear-stricken.

Emily has completely eased up by now. She's calm and composed, bereft of the consternation and anger of a few moments ago. Her hands, with which she had encircled her upper body to shield herself from her mother at the beginning of their talk, rest peacefully in her lap now. She reaches out and places her palm on her mother's hand, squeezing it softly. 

"I'm glad I share your DNA, mom."

"Because I'm able to donate blood to you?" Scully's deadpans.

"No, that's only a plus," Emily retorts with a sheepish grin before she continues with sincerity, "I'm glad I share your DNA because you're a wonderful person. You're intelligent, you're strong, you're pretty. I hope I inherited some of your qualities."

"You don't need any of my qualities, Emily. You have your own and you're wonderful just as you are. I can't think of a better daughter."

"I'm touched by how you fought for me when you found out who I was. That you married someone you weren't in love with just to get custody of me."

"Wellll, that is another story."

"What is?"

"Whether or not Mulder and I were in love with each other when we got married."

"But you said-"

"I said we weren't romantically involved, not that we didn't love each other."

"Uh, where's the difference again?" 

"There's a little technicality I'm not willing to explain right now." 

"One day?"

"Why don't you ask your father when he gets back?"

No way is Scully going to tell her daughter the story of how their marriage slowly shifted from being one on paper only to one being passionately consummated. Mulder can do it. He's been spared breaking the adoption story to their daughter, he can as well explain to her how two people can be deeply in love with each other for so many years, get married for a higher cause without ever having been intimate, only to eventually surrender to the inevitable and allow romance to take over.

"Mom?" Emily stops Scully's train of thought. "Would you really donate your last drop of blood to me?"

"Of course."

"I would donate my last one to you too."

"I wouldn't let you."

"Why?"

"Because although I haven't given birth to you, you are my child, and mothers sacrifice themselves for their children if need be, not the other way around."

"Hmmm."

"One day, when you have children of your own, Emily, you will understand."

Children hate nothing more than being told that they are too young to understand, but Emily doesn't seem to mind at this moment. She's pensive, processing what she's come to learn. It will need some time for her to grasp the whole concept of her very special connection to the family she's a part of.

"Mom?"

"Yes?"

"I understand that you've kept this from me. This is huge, and it would've been too much to deal with for me at a younger age. Thanks for being so...protective, always, and thanks for telling me today although dad wasn't here."

"You deserved to know, Em."

"When I ask dad, will he tell me about the part he played in this?"

"I'm sure he will."

"You're good parents. The best. I want to shoot you to the moon sometimes but I'm glad you found me and that you made me a part of your lives."

Scully is at a loss for words. She pulls the teenager to her chest and embraces her so tightly, Emily can hardly breathe and has to tell her to let go at some point. Only unwillingly does Scully release her daughter, not without pressing a kiss into her hair, sighing, "I love you to the moon you want me to shoot to and back, snugabug."

"Jeez, mom, promise me to never call me that in front of my friends! It'd be so embarrassing!"

Scully has to chuckle. "I promise...Emily."

The dark spell that lasted heavily on them for the past half hour is broken. They are back to their usual mother-daughter-selves, only that something that laid dormant between them has been shuffled out of the way. Scully is immensely grateful the taboo issue has eventually been addressed and talked about. 

It was time. 

From here, everything will be straightened out and they can continue their path together as mother and daughter. No further labels attached.


	5. First Times

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that it took me so long to update this. I have two more chapters in my head and I will try to write them down a little faster.

"Mom?"

"Yes, dear?"

"Are you busy?"

"I'm about to wrap up an autopsy report," Scully says, turning her chair away from the computer on her desk to meet her daughter's eyes. When she sees how Emily shifts her weight nervously from one foot to the other, her eyes fluttering, she adds with a smile, "but it can wait."

She gets up to settle on Mulder's old couch from his Alexandria apartment. It had been moved into her office some time ago because his had become stuffed with too many filing cabinets to host it any longer. "Why don't you shut the door behind you and join me?" she offers, patting softly on the worn leather next to her.

They have a difficult conversation ahead of them, that much is clear from the way the 16-year-old is standing there, her hands firmly intertwined and still slightly trembling. Her lips are swollen from biting them too hard and her cheeks are blushing. In the thirteen years the girl has been living with them, Scully has learned to read her too well to be misreading her demeanor now. Taking a seat next to her mother, Emily tucks a strand of her ginger hair behind her ear in a nervous gesture so familiar it makes Scully smile inwardly. When she takes one of her daughter's hands in hers it's sweaty and cold, another puzzle piece that fits perfectly.

"Just spit it out, honey. You know you can talk to me about anything. It will make you feel better, I promise."

Emily takes a deep inhale, then holds her breath for a few seconds before she exhales slowly through her pursed lips. "It's rather personal...uh, it has to do with...with Luke," she finally supplies.

Scully's pulse starts galloping. Luke is Emily's first serious boyfriend, they have been going steady for about half a year. He's one of her classmates, a nice young man with good manners and a frequent and welcome guest at their house. There was some initial reservation on Mulder's part toward a male who had set out to take the number one position with his baby girl away from him - when he saw them kissing goodbye once from the kitchen window, Scully hardly managed to keep him from dashing outside and pulling them apart - but he accommodated to the situation eventually. But then again, what choice has he had? Their girl is growing up, going through the ups and downs of puberty like everyone else, and taking the first tentative steps into the world of dating is part of it.

The two teenagers are cute together, experiencing their first love. Of course, they had the talk with Emily; well, Scully had. Mulder only shrugged his shoulders and told her she was the scientist and doctor, and, even more so, a woman and most certainly much better at this than him. She called him a coward but assumed the responsibility of telling their daughter everything about conception, birth control, protection, and about what the right age was in her eyes to start sexual activities.

As far as Scully is concerned, sixteen is too young. Emily is practically still a kid, unable to fathom the enormity of what it means for a woman to lose her virginity. She hopes her daughter will wait until she is eighteen, at least, or even better, twenty. If she asked Mulder, he'd opt for thirty, or maybe never. Although, he's secretly dreaming of grandkids, of that Scully is sure. She also knows, she cannot stipulate much anymore when it comes to the life of her teenage daughter, all she can do is argue with her and explain her view on matters. Parents lose control over most aspects of the lives of their children when they hit puberty. All they can do is keep the communication channels open, and that is exactly what Scully is willing to do.

"What's on your mind, sweetheart? Sex?"

"Mom!"

"Isn't that what you came to talk to me about?"

"No!" the girl exclaims with determination, but mumbles under her breath then, "well, maybe. In a way. But it's not like we are planning it for next week."

Scully tries to hide her relief. A lot of girls have sex at Emily's age. She saw quite a few of them during her residency in the OB/GYN department. Teenage mothers, young girls pregnant, girls with social diseases, and some simply dealing badly with the emotional consequences of their actions.

"Okay. What can I do? What would you like to know about sex?"

"Mom!"

"What?"

"Why do you have to be so outspoken?"

"It's nothing you have to whisper about or to be ashamed of, Em. We all have been through the infamous first time."

"Mo-hom!"

"I'm a doctor, Emily, I won't be speaking of birds and bees."

"I'm aware of that, but I don't want to talk about my first time...not directly at any rate. Rather in the sense of..."

"In what sense?"

It takes the teenager a moment to bring herself to utter what's on her mind.

"My friends...Jessica and Brittany and Charlotte, they all...well...they say I'd be a late starter if...if I don't...ugh..."

"A late starter?"

"Yes. They have all already done it. All but me. But I don't feel I'm ready for it just yet. Is something wrong with me?"

"What? There is absolutely nothing wrong with you. You've just turned sixteen, for heaven's sake. Let your friends brag about the sex they've allegedly had, don't let yourself get insecure about the decision you've made for yourself, Emily."

"Allegedly?"

"Oh, honey, those who brag the loudest about their sex life are usually the ones who are not having any. That's a fact that applies to all age groups, male and female."

"Really? They said I was a prude because I told them I wanted to wait a little more. I mean, I love Luke, but..." Now that the very essence of what she tried to get off her chest was out, it's possible for Emily to form complete sentences. Possible, but still not easy.

"Losing your virginity is a personal choice, not a competition. I'm very proud of you that you had the guts to stand by your opinion. I know peers can exert a lot of pressure within a clique, but you shouldn't let yourself be pushed into anything."

"How do I know when the time is right for...for the, uhm, the first time?"

Good question. How does one know the time is right to turn a relationship into an intimate one? As if Scully was an expert. The many years it took her to finally allow romance into her friendship with Mulder hardly qualify as a benchmark. She contemplates a moment, gathering the right words to explain what she thinks is important.

"First of all, you need to be with the right person."

"I love Luke."

"Love isn't everything. You also need to trust him. Sex takes a relationship to a whole new level, Emily. It means giving yourself to someone. You grant the other person access to your soul. You render yourself vulnerable."

The girl furrows her brow for a moment before she speaks, but then the words flow out of her.

"I do trust Luke. I know he wouldn't take advantage of me. Never. I have no doubts he would treat me well. And when we are together...erm, you know...and we kiss...I get all dizzy and I want...I...want..."

"To be as close to him as possible?"

"Mmm, yes."

Scully hums, taken in by the image of the girl sitting in front of her, her baby girl, making out with a young man. She shakes the thought off to be able to continue.

"You have to feel comfortable when you think about it. You can be nervous and even self-conscious, but not uncomfortable. It's important you do it because you want it and not because someone tells you you have to. Losing your virginity is a personal choice, and it's yours alone."

"Luke would never talk me into anything. He loves me. He would never want me to be uncomfortable. Ever."

Scully is touched by the infinite trust the teenager has in the love to her boyfriend, still so inexperienced and innocent when it comes to the matters of the heart that she is oblivious to the circumstance that a once beloved person can indeed turn into someone who is able and willing to hurt. Puppy love is the sweetest and purest kind of love. Scully remembers how she thought that her childhood sweetheart was the one and only, that she would be together with him forever, that it couldn't get any better than this; until she saw him kissing another girl, one with long legs and big boobs who was known for being easy. It would take her another fifteen years and several relationships - some better, some worse - until she met her soulmate, her perfect other.

As if Emily has read her mother's thoughts, she asks, "was dad your first?"

"What? No, uhm," Scully gulps, caught off-guard by the question. "I had been with other men before. Not that many, but a few. There was one I thought I'd spend my whole life with but then...well..." The rest of the sentence falls away.

"What happened?"

"I broke up with him. Although I loved him. I loved him a lot, but..."

It's still difficult for Scully to come to terms with her relationship with Daniel Waterston, her professor and mentor in medical school.

"He was married. He was about to leave his wife and daughter for me and I realized I couldn't base my happiness on someone else's misery. After that relationship, I needed a clear cut. Coming to D.C. and joining the FBI was a cut. A very clear and deep cut. Not many people approved of it. My family told me I was throwing away a career in medicine."

"You made a career at the FBI."

"Well, I wouldn't call it a career."

If she had fulfilled her initial assignment and debunked Mulder's work on the X-Files as she had been directed, she would have been able to climb the ladder within the FBI hierarchy probably. With her determination and stamina she might have made it up to the position of an Assistant Director or maybe even Deputy Director. There were people who told her she had what it takes to become the first female Director of the FBI. But she had never been driven by wanting a career, neither in medicine nor at the FBI. She wanted to be of service, wanted to make the world a better place, wanted to save lives. She knows she's accomplished some of these goals. She saved the girl sitting in front of her.

"But you met dad when you came to D.C."

"Mmm, eventually, yes, but it took a while. Two years. I went to the Academy first and received my training. And then, one day, I got summoned into the Section Chief's office to be assigned to work with one Fox Mulder. And, well, you're right, this particular assignment changed my life."

She doesn't tell Emily about the short time she dated Jack Willis, one of her instructors at Quantico. Rebound relationships are never meant to last and Scully still marvels that she had held on to a pattern of getting involved with powerful men who were her work superiors. Interestingly enough, the one relationship that lasted is the one with a man who treats her as an equal. Mulder thought he needed to act as her protector only at the very beginning of their partnership when her slim frame and short stature ignited his protective instinct like it used to do in almost every man. Contrary to all the others, he learned quickly that she was a fierce, tough agent capable of everything a male agent was capable of. He never looked down on her but based himself on equal footing with her from day one.

Sometimes she thinks it only took them so long to become romantically involved because she hid her soft, feminine side so well in order to become a part of the boys club that, at some point, Mulder had indeed unlearned to see the woman in her. She'd become his sexless partner, someone who had no physical needs, and, almost more importantly, wasn't to be physically desired. Why else did he react the way he did after her one-night stand with Ed Jerse if not because he was totally dumbfounded to find out she'd allowed a man to take her to bed? It only occurred to her years later that he might also have been a bit jealous, but if Mulder had really envied Jerse for the night he had spent with her, he sure hadn't expressed it openly. Ed Jerse, the worst decision she has ever made. Not the having a one-night stand part of it, but letting herself be guided by anger inflicted on her by another man. Jerse was a proxy, and it almost cost her her life.

"How was your first time with dad?"

The question hits Scully unexpectedly, her thoughts still being with Ed Jerse. "Oh brother," she groans.

"Sorry."

Emily's alarmed, contrite expression on her face speaks volumes of how she thinks she's overstepped. And it's indeed what Scully feels initially. She has never had to fathom talking with her children about her sex life, but then she realizes that she can't be the one closing off after her daughter has confided in her. Communication is a two-way street, and if she wants to have an open and honest conversation with her, she needs to be open and honest as well.

"No, it's alright. I'm really glad you came to me to talk about this, Em. I know it's not easy to talk about sex, to your mother of all people, but even if it's awkward, it's important to talk about it. Sex is a wonderful experience when it's done right, and for this to happen you have to talk about it. You have to voice what you want, when, where, how. Not to me," she raises her hands, palms up, and chuckles, "but to the person you love. Us talking could help you to loosen up a bit, so sure, I'll tell you about my first time with your father."

"O-kay," Emily replies hesitantly, dragging the 'o' to a length that indicates her discomfort.

"I won't go into too much detail, relax," Scully says with a self-conscious smile herself. "What might interest you, though, is that we waited several years."

"Several?"

Scully clears her throat. "Six almost, to be precise."

"Six years?"

"Yup."

"Why?"

"You remember the conversation we had not long ago about how you came into our lives? How I am your biological but not your birth mother?"  
(A/N: this conversation can be found in part 4 of this series)

"Sure! Do you really believe I would forget a conversation like that?"

"I told you that Mulder and I weren't involved when we got married, that the initial purpose of our marriage was only for me to be able to adopt you."

"I remember that but you didn't tell me you'd known each other for six years when all of this happened."

"Almost six. Five and a half, actually."

"Six, five and a half...it's not so much of a difference, is it? It still makes me want to ask what made you wait so long."

In retrospect, it really sounds a bit weird and difficult to understand, even to Mulder and herself, but at the time, it seemed perfectly right and reasonable.

"Well, we started out as co-workers. I was assigned to your father to debunk his work, and he knew it. And I knew of his special reputation."

"Special reputation?"

"At Quantico, everybody called him Spooky Mulder."

"Haha, yeah, that sounds like a fitting nickname for him. Fox Spooky Mulder."

Emily grew up with so many bedtime stories about aliens, ghosts, sea monsters, witches, voodoo priests, and black magicians, she was invited to countless slumber parties just for the creepy stories she was able to tell.

"So you didn't want to work with dad because of his reputation?"

"Oh, I wanted to. The scientist in me was intrigued by the special cases he'd been dealing with, and, of course, I wanted to know what all the gossip was about. But most of all, I wanted to know what was behind this weird assignment of mine, why they wanted him to be reined in. And why they were using me, an inexperienced rookie, to do the deed, So, I was looking forward to working with him."

"Was he nice to you when you first met?"

"Not particularly. I sensed he was annoyed that he'd been assigned a green agent, and I was green when it came to field work, totally green. Until then, all I had done was teach forensic pathology at Quantico. He'd done his homework and had run a background check on me before we first met, so he knew I wasn't dumb. He'd even bothered to read my senior physics thesis, but I bet he thought I wasn't capable of working in the field, given my gender and my height and my lack of experience. And, of course, he was well aware of what the purpose of my assignment was. What he didn't know, not yet, was that I didn't like to be taken advantage of and that I wasn't willing to let anyone use me for their agenda. He would learn quickly," Scully adds with a smile.

"How so?"

"He dragged me to our first case in Oregon to scare me off, but I followed him with an open mind. I listened to his theories, however crazy they were, dismissed them with scientific logic wherever I could, not by simply brushing them off as spooky like he was used to. I gave him rational arguments and scientific facts, I argued with him, tried to make him consider other possibilities than the ones he'd already set his mind on. I wasn't able to convince him, but I surprised him. In a good way. He wasn't used to this unbiased approach of mine, and I guess it impressed him."

"So he began to like you although he didn't want to."

"We solved the case and I made it clear that fulfilling other people's ambiguous goals wasn't my way of doing things. He started to believe me when I said I wanted to make this partnership really work. He realized he could trust me, and so he opened up to me. He told me all about Samantha's abduction that first night in Oregon. That says a lot."

"A lot lot. I mean, mom, his sister's abduction is his most personal childhood trauma. I bet he'd been laughed at whenever he told this story, so opening up to you about it even though he hardly knew you must have been a big deal for him."

"I guess he knew I wouldn't laugh at him. And of course, I didn't. Quite the contrary. I felt so sorry for him. I sensed how much this loss had influenced his whole life, how it had made him so unyielding in his effort to find the truth. I wanted to be a good partner to him, to help him find what he was looking for."

"And dad noticed your intentions were good."

"So it seemed, yes. We became a good team, very successful. The solve rate of the department we worked for skyrocketed."

"The infamous X-Files."

Emily has heard one story or two about the weird cases her parents had been dealing with.

"Yes, the infamous X-Files. We were outsiders within the Bureau and it melded us together. We relied on each other completely and spent a lot of time together. He transitioned from being my partner to being my confidant, best friend, and somehow unnoticed, at some point in time, I had fallen in love with him."

"And the whole process took you six years? Uh, sorry, almost six years?"

Her daughter's laconic ridicule elicits an amused chuckle from Scully.

"No, the falling in love took less than that, it was the realizing that took this long, or let's say, the admitting to myself, the having the courage to stand by my feelings. By the way, your father wasn't any better at this."

"What kept you from accepting your feelings and...uh...erm..."

"Sleeping with each other?"

The teenager nods, her cheeks blushing.

"Our professional attitude, our work ethic, and our search for the truth. There were people inside and outside the Bureau who would have used an intimate relationship against us. We would have made ourselves vulnerable, would have presented our Achilles' heel to our enemies on a silver platter. The work was too important to us to risk anything."

"More important than your love?"

"Not necessarily more important, but important enough not to throw everything overboard and dive head first into a romantic relationship. We showed our feelings for each other in other ways. Your father went all the way to Antarctica to rescue me from a perilous situation, for example, and I once refused to disclose his whereabouts in front of a government committee and went to prison for it. For a long time, that was enough for us. We were like...I don't know what to call it...platonic lovers maybe."

"Platonic lovers? Does something like this even exist? It sounds weird."

"In our case it did. Our companionship and our camaraderie were sacred to us. I would say we knew each other better than most married couples. We definitely spent more time with each other than most married couples, and not a few of our fellow agents thought we acted like a married couple. We were called Mr. and Mrs. Spooky, not in a well-meant way."

Scully remembers the office pool run by one of their colleagues: whoever foretold the day they would make their entanglement official, would earn a fortune. It still gives her some kind of satisfaction that they never made anything official, so the money probably has never been distributed. She also remembers the whispering at the coffee machine and abrupt silence whenever either Mulder or she came by to get a cup of coffee. The looks, the smirks, the gestures that were exchanged behind their backs. It only welded them closer together. It was them against the rest of the world.

"Was there no physical attraction between you? I mean you were two healthy adults, didn't you have like...needs?"

Oh, the tension. Scully still feels it in every fiber of her being. There was so much electricity in the room with Mulder and her sometimes, she was surprised they never caused a blow-up because of the sparks flaring between them.

"Yes, there was, and it was a challenge sometimes, but you know, some things are worth the wait."

Emily sighs. "Oh come on, mom, that's such a trite common phrase."

"It isn't trite, not at all. You are waiting."

"It's different with me. I'm a teenager. I've been together with Luke for a few months only, but you were...I mean, all grown-up and experienced and stuff."

"Still, becoming intimate should never be rushed into. It's something you can't undo, Emily. If you sleep with someone, you cross a line and the coordinate system of the relationship is shifted forever. You can't go back to how it was before."

"Is that why dad and you waited so long?"

The teenager shakes her head, still marveling.

"Partly, yes. We didn't know if we would still be able to work together afterward, if it would cloud our judgment. Plus, I mean, if you fantasize about something for so long, at a certain point, you get anxious if the real thing will fulfill your expectations."

"Did it?"

A nervous cough escapes Scully's throat. Has she really been asked by her teenage daughter to tell her about the first night she spent with Mulder? It surpassed her fantasies, actually. It was a spiritual experience almost. The way they completed each other, the way Mulder worshipped her body, the pleasure they gave each other. They were both so insecure and so certain at the same time, exhausted from bottling up their feelings for each other for so long but equally desperate to finally cross the line they had been pushing ahead of themselves. Scully remembers she felt simultaneously like laughing and crying when Mulder and she were coming together, the sweetest pleasure washing over her like a tidal wave but also a sadness when she realized what they had been denying themselves for so long. That night Scully knew for certain that she would never love someone else in her whole life like she loved Mulder.

The x-rated images of that memorable first time buzzing around Scully's head led to a reaction of her pulse: it has accelerated considerably, pushing the blood through her system all the way up to her cheeks she feels blushing. Remarkable how this single, long passed night still affects her. She's so distracted by her own wandering mind, which doesn't stop taking her on a stroll down memory lane, that she barely notices Emily's hand bobbing up and down in front of her eyes.

"Yoohoo, earth to mom! Are you still with me?"

"Oh...ah...erm, yes. I'm here," Scully manages to force out, her voice an octave higher than it usually is. "I, uh...I was just, uhm..."

"Reminiscing?" the girl asks with a sheepish grin. She isn't a kid anymore, she most certainly has an idea what her mother has been thinking of.

Scully pulls herself together to form a full sentence, trying to hide how arousing those sweet memories have been. If Mulder was here, he would get a kick out of her bodily reaction. "I was thinking about how to answer your question, Emily," she's finally able to supply somewhat composed.

"Uh-huh," the girl replies, obviously not buying it.

It's the truth though, even if, admittedly, only half of it. Scully was looking for the right words to tell Emily how first times can indeed live up to the imagination, but then her thoughts strayed off a little. Of course, she won't share any of it with her daughter, too many intimate details won't do any good. So she shakes off the remains of her dreaminess and brings herself back to the reality of the here and now. There is another important piece of advice for life she wants to pass on.

"First times are never easy, no matter how experienced you are. They make you nervous and they can be awkward. The very first time can hurt a little, there might even be some bleeding, but it's harmless and totally normal."

Emily nods, avoiding her mother's eyes. Now that they've come back to her forthcoming experience, embarrassment gets the better of her again, but Scully has a few more important things to tell her.

"And you know that you can say 'no' any time, don't you? Even when you've already started. Don't let a man tell you you have to go through with it because you promised. It's your body, and you decide what happens to it. If Luke truly loves you, he will respect your decision."

Scully gets another silent nod from her daughter, who keeps staring at the hands in her lap, her cheeks crimson red and her earlobes hot; the same physical reaction her mother experienced some minutes before.

"And protect yourselves. Always insist on a condom, Emily. Do you know how to put it on? If you want me to show-"

"Mom!"

Scully throws her hands up in the air in an apologetic gesture. "Just saying. Don't rely on the boy for protection, that's what I mean. You are responsible for your own body. You are the one who gets pregnant, and you would have to deal with a social disease."

"I won't get pregnant, and I won't get AIDS."

A bit of annoyance shines through the answer as if it was totally superfluous for Scully to be explaining this, but the doctor in her continues undeterred.

"There are far more sexually transmitted diseases than just AIDS, honey."

"Relax, mom, I have this covered. Theoretically, I mean."

"Good." Now it's Scully's turn to tuck the rogue strand of hair behind Emily's ear as it has fallen out and she doesn't want her daughter hiding behind it. "Any more questions?"

"Not right now. Thanks, mom."

Emily exhales loudly, obviously relieved this conversation is approaching its end. The situation has been difficult and more than awkward for her, but when she looks at her mother, her grateful smile is evidence of her high appreciation.

"Really, mom, I don't think any of my friends' mothers would have stayed as cool as you about this...erm, matter."

Cool? She has appeared cool? Scully is a little proud of herself that she has been able to hide the mixture of emotions invading her mind for the last twenty minutes. She wasn't cool, not at all. She was uncomfortable, at least at the beginning, anxious if she would be able to find the right words and tone, overwhelmed that the little girl she had adopted at the age of three has grown into a young woman who is thinking of having sex, but also immensely grateful for their solid, trustful mother-daughter-relationship that allowed Emily to confide in her with a matter so personal and intimate.

They beam at each other and Scully spreads her arms to invite Emily into an embrace. The girl willingly places her chin on her mother's shoulder and mumbles, "you're the best mom I can imagine."

"Always here for you."

"I know."

When Scully pulls her even closer, Emily disentangles herself from the grasp, much to Scully's chagrin as she wouldn't have minded remaining in that position for a little while longer. Since her kids became teenagers, hugging and cuddling have become far less frequent, and she misses it.

"Actually, there is one more question I'd like to ask you."

"Yes?"

"What did dad do to finally get some?"

"Please, what?"

"How did he manage to get you to bed?"

"What kind of language is this, young lady?"

"Don't veer off, mom! What move of his made you toss your silly rules aside eventually and do it?"

"Those rules weren't silly, not at all. They were the foundation of a professional work ethic."

"Jeez, mom, good girls go to heaven, it's the naughty ones who have all the fun," the girl recites.

Scully can't believe what she's hearing. Her daughter truly wants to know how her parents ended up in bed? Never in a million years had she thought of telling that particular detail of the story, but then again, why shouldn't she let her daughter understand that women don't have to wait for things to happen just because they are women? That if she wants something bad enough, she should become active and get herself what she wants.

"Very well, then you might be relieved to learn that your mother hasn't always been a good girl."

There is a lot of innuendo in Scully's voice but her facial expression is completely blank. It does the trick, Emily is enticed. The girl scoots a little closer to her mother, leans toward her and whispers as if she's expecting to be told a secret, "no?"

"No," is Scully's taciturn reply.

"Aaaannd?" she girl nudges gently, curious down to the tips of her hair.

Scully enjoys the impatient look Emily is throwing her and just purses her lips. When she thinks back to that life-altering night, to how she thought 'now or never' after she had woken up on Mulder's couch, alone, covered by an itchy blanket, missing him terribly beside her, she's glad to this very day that she had the guts to go through with what her heart told her to do, with what her heart had been longing to do for she hadn't known how long.

"It was me who initiated our first time. I slipped under your father's sheets on my own accord."

"No," Emily yelps, "you didn't!"

It sounds like she doesn't believe her mother, but her wide, sparkling eyes reflect excitement and admiration, not indignation.

"I had wanted to for a long time, and there was a night, I made it happen."

"Ooooh, you did!" the girl shrieks, completely enthused by now.

"He wasn't expecting me at all, and I caught him completely off-guard, I can tell you that much."

"Haha, I can imagine. The irresistible Fox Mulder seduced by a woman, who would have thought? Did it hurt his male pride?"

"Actually no, it didn't. He was being really sweet, asked me a million times if I was really sure, if he was doing it right, if I had any doubts, if he should stop...ugh...he was being so damn cautious and chivalrous, so keen on not overdoing anything, that I lost my patience eventually and told him to shut the fuck up and make love to me."

Emily gasps in feigned shock. "Mom! Language!" The girl underlines her mockery by putting on a stern face which eventually makes them both laugh. It takes them a while to recompose themselves, the reversed roles of mother and daughter being too funny. It's Emily who resumes their conversation.

"I'm impressed, mom. Really. I didn't know you could be so brazen."

Scully has also shaken off the merriment and is back to earnestness when she says, "I wasn't being brazen, Em. I just voiced what I wanted. I was an emancipated woman, I didn't have to wait for the object of my desire to make a pass at me, I could make the first step as well. I was in love with someone, I wanted to be with him, he might have never gotten in gear, and I wasn't willing to wait even a single day longer, so I acted."

"So you're saying that it's important to let the other person know what you want. To tell them, or show them."

"First, you have to make sure you know what you want, Emily. If you want to have sex with someone, Luke at some point in time or some other guy, or maybe a girl, that's fine. It's a natural need. If you love someone, you want to be together with them as close as you can, and it can't get any closer than that, physically and emotionally. There's nothing wrong with it as long as everyone involved is acting responsibly."

"Dad and you really are a perfect match," Emily raves, animated by what she has heard and witnessed over the years.

The way her parents interact with each other, how they respect each other, complement each other, is remarkable. They are not always of the same opinion, especially when it comes to their work, but they always listen to the other, take each other seriously. They are two strong characters, but they are equals, that's maybe what impresses Emily the most. She's seen the relationships of her friends' parents, where the one who earns more money gets to have the say in the house, where the sole duty of stay-at-home-moms seems to be pleasing their husbands, where women give up their professional ambitions for the sake of their families. Nothing of this sort has ever happened in the Mulder-Scully-household, demonstrated merely by the fact that her mother has kept her name after the marriage, and that her father calls her Scully to this very day. Emily wants a relationship just like her parents' for herself and she's aware that they've set the benchmark very high.

"When I see you and dad, I know what to wait for, mom."

Scully can't but gape at her daughter. Sure, as parents, Mulder and she raise their children also by living the values they preach and putting them into practice themselves, but Scully has never consciously contemplated that the way they interact with each other as a couple has an impact on her children as well, that their relationship serves as a guiding concept for Emily and William when it comes to their own personal relationships.

"Honestly, you're my role models. I mean, the way you love and care for each other, respect each other...I hope I will find a love like this someday."

"Of course, you will! Somewhere out there there is someone who will love you exactly the way you deserve, Em. You just have to be patient and wait for that person to cross your path."

"Patient, huh?" The girl lets that sink in for a moment before she continues. "You said before you met dad you'd been together with a man who proposed to you. How did you know you had to turn him down? How did you know he wasn't the one for you, that your true match was still out there, and you just had to be patient until you meet him?"

"I didn't, honey. How was I to know what the future held for me? I just felt this marriage wasn't something I wanted for my life. I didn't want to take a man away from his wife and daughter, and I trusted my feelings."

"So you broke up with him not knowing if you would ever find someone else. It could've been a terrible mistake."

"Could've. You can never be sure where your decisions take you, Em. You have to do what you believe is right for you in a given moment and just hope it leads you where you want to go. You have to have faith in yourself and your decisions, whether they be for or against something or someone."

"Have you ever wondered what your life would've been like if you had married that other guy?"

Scully smiles for a moment, walking down memory lane again.

"I spoke to Mulder about it once, shortly before we became involved. I had met Daniel by coincidence and he asked what it was I wanted in my life. It made me contemplate."

"And jump in dad's bed," Emily deadpans.

"Emily Abigail Mulder, stop speaking to your mother like this!"

"O-oh, middle name...stage I warning. Sorry, mom, but knowing that you seduced dad instead of the other way around is just so..."

"So?"

"Never mind. You didn't answer my question. Have you ever thought about how your life would've turned out if you had accepted the proposal?"

Scully lets her thoughts run free for a moment. Her future with Daniel had been quite foreseeable. Maybe it had been part of what made her choose a different path.

"I would've stayed in medicine, cardiology probably. Daniel was a well-known heart surgeon and he had plans for my career. I was very young when he proposed, had just graduated from med school, it would've been too early for me to have kids, but somewhere along the road, I guess, we would've tried for a baby. We would've moved to the suburbs into a house with a garden for the kids to play. Probably."

"Sounds pretty good."

"Well, there's no reason to believe a life with Daniel wouldn't have been happy or fulfilled, but..." Scully's voice fails thinking of it, "God, what I would've missed."

She closes her eyes and random images are bouncing off the insides of her eyelids: Mulder, the Flukeman, Mulder, Duane Barry, their basement office, Padgett, Mulder, the Cigarette Smoking Man, Mulder's couch, Super Soldiers, Mulder in a coffin, an ultrasound of a baby boy, William, Emily, Mulder...

"I would've missed a whole life with Mulder. I would've missed having William and you. I've been to a few dark places in this life, very dark places, but it was worth it. It was worth everything. I couldn't be any happier than I am."

Emily goes quiet for a beat before she mumbles, "wow, thanks for telling me all of this, mom."

"You're welcome, sweetheart. There's nothing we can't talk about, please never forget that. My door is always open."

Scully cups her daughter's cheek, she then rubs the wrinkle over her eyebrow away gently with her fingertip.

"I think there's some homework I need to do," Emily seems to remember all of a sudden.

Scully hums and nods acquiescently. She knows this is an attempt to finally end the conversation, and she won't torture her daughter by prolonging their chat. Instead, she offers, "if you need any help."

"It's for the psychology class. I'll ask dad."

"Okay."

"I'll let you finish your autopsy report."

"Thank you."

"I guess you want to get it done before dinner."

"Yes, that would be nice."

"What are we going to have for dinner?"

"Pasta Primavera."

"Great. Need any help?"

"No, thanks. I've already prepared everything, all I'll need to do is throw it together. Go and get your homework done, I'll call you when dinner is ready."

"Okay, then, " Emily says but doesn't get up. As if she can't decide to leave.

"There's absolutely no need for this to turn awkward now, Emily," Scully helps her out. "We've had a good adult conversation, but now that it's over, we can go back to normal."

"You aren't going to think differently of me from now on?"

"Why would I do that?"

"Because I asked you about...you know..."

"Sex," Scully names it for her daughter once again who still seems to be hesitant to use the word, at least in front of her mother.

"Yeah."

"My little Emily has grown into a young woman and I'm immensely grateful for having been allowed to watch you get older and more mature, to accompany you on your journey through life, or at least parts of it. I consider it a gift, sweetheart. And no matter how old you are, even if you're a mother yourself one day, you'll always be my baby girl, my daughter I'm so terribly proud of."

"And you will always be my mom. My smart mom I know I can ask about anything. Matters of the heart," she puts one hand to her chest over her own heart, and then, tilting her head in direction of Scully's computer, she grins and adds, "and of all other bodily organs. Speaking of which, what is this report about?"

Scully turns her head to cast a glance at the screen herself.

"Oh, uhm, the lungs. This person died of a mysterious lung disease we haven't been able to identify yet."

Both women rise from the couch now. The topic of their conversation has changed for good, and they're both fine with it.

"But you're going to find the cause," Emily says, knowing this doesn't need to be phrased as a question.

"Of course."

Turning on her heel, the teenager parrots, "of course," a slight smile tugging at the corners of her mouth when she leaves the room.

Scully looks after her, also smiling. She gets back to her computer, tucks her hair behind her ears while sitting down and puts her reading glasses back onto her nose.

"Okay, Mister Shroud, let's find out what made your lungs collapse. I'm sure it wasn't a virus from outer space but something very earthly, no matter what Mulder believes."

It only takes half a minute for Scully to bury herself back deeply into the scientific mystery in front of her. The subject of her daughter having sex sometime in the near future might have vanished from her working mind, but the fulfilling sentiment of motherhood remains in her subconscious. She's a mother of two wonderful children, and despite the worries and the fears for them she will always have to deal with, no matter how old her kids are, it's moments like these she's immensely grateful that after all the terrible things Mulder and she had been through, life, at least, hadn't begrudged them parenthood. It has been and continues to be their most exciting journey.

**Author's Note:**

> This could turn into a series of some length, if anyone is interested. Just let me know if you’re up for more.


End file.
